Official comments on the upcoming exercise have been sketchy. The chief of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, Colonel General Nikolai Solovtsov, was quoted by the Interfax-Military News Agency as saying the planned maneuvers would involve several launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles in various regions of Russia, but he would not give further details.
A Defense Ministry spokesman refused to comment on the reports. The Russian military typically says little about upcoming exercises.
The reports came at an indelicate time, as US Undersecretary of State John Bolton met here yesterday with Russia's top nuclear official, for talks on strengthening controls against the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
Bolton and Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev discussed bilateral cooperation in the nuclear sphere, nonproliferation problems, and "current issues of radioactive and nuclear safety in the world," the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Kommersant said the maneuvers would involve Tu-160 strategic bombers test-firing cruise missiles over the northern Atlantic. Analysts describe such an exercise as an imitation of a nuclear attack on the United States.
Other groups of bombers will fly over Russia's Arctic regions and test-fire missiles at a southern range near the Caspian Sea, the newspaper said.
As part of the exercise, the military is planning to conduct several launches of ICBMs, including one from a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, the Kommersant report said.
The military also plans to launch military satellites from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and the Plesetsk launch pad in northern Russia -- a simulation of the replacement of satellites lost in action, Kommersant said.
Russia's system warning of an enemy missile attack and a missile defense system protecting Moscow will also be involved in the exercise, it added.
Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst, said the military has regularly held nuclear exercises that were timed to coincide with the annual test-firing of aging Soviet-built missiles.
"It has been a routine affair, but it can be expanded if they want a show," he said.
Ivan Safranchuk, head of the Moscow office of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington-based think tank, said the maneuvers would further strengthen Putin's popularity ahead of the March 14 presidential election he is expected to win easily.Kommersant said Moscow had notified Washington about the exercise, describing it as part of efforts to fend off terror threats even though it imitates the Cold War scenario of an all-out war.
